The Russian Emergencies Ministry reported a meteoroid exploded in the skies above the Urals region, sending a shock wave that shattered windows.
"A meteorite disintegrated above the Urals, partially burning up in the lower atmosphere," the local office of the national emergencies ministry said in a statement.
"Fragments of the meteorite reached Earth, falling in sparsely populated areas in the Chelyabinsk region," it said.
The Russian interior ministry said in a statement that injuries were recorded in six towns. ''Over 250 people were injured, three of them seriously."
The statement said "numerous calls of panic" had been received. Burning streaks lit up the sky, caught by drivers on dashboard cameras and posted on YouTube.
''A serious meteor fell,'' billionaire Sergey Galitskiy, chief executive officer of OAO Magnit, Russia's biggest food retailer, said in a post on his Twitter account. ''At our hypermarket in Emanzhelinsk, windows were blown out, the roof shook, there was a strong shock wave.''
More than 300 people have reported injuries, mostly from broken glass, Vadim Kolesnik, a ministry official, said by phone.x
None were serious or required hospitalisation, according to the ministry. Russia's public health chief Gennady Onishchenko closed schools in the Chelyabinsk region, Interfax said.
As many as 20,000 emergency staff and three aircraft have been deployed in the Urals region, the ministry said.
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